SOCIAL CAPITAL AND CIVIC REPUBLICANISM.
1. Introduction.
Social capital is a concept recently created and widely used in the last years to
explain a wide variety of issues, from the effectiveness of democratic institutions to the
formation of human capital. There are different definitions of social capital available in
the literature, but all of them agree that social capital implies “a set of institutionalized
expectations that other actors will reciprocate cooperative overtures” (Boix and Posner
1997).
Robert Putnam’s Making Democracy Work is perhaps the most known work on
social capital. In this work, Putnam applied the concept of social capital as an
independent variable to explain the effectiveness of regional institutions in Italy since
the 1970s. The differences in institutional performance between the northern and
southern Italian regions are explained, according to Putnam, by the different stock of
social capital found in those regions. In this study it can also be found an explicit
defence of the relation between social capital and civic traditions1. In one of the more
controversial parts of his book, Putnam traces the origins of the differences in social
capital among Italian regions up to the XI century and the rising of the city republics of
northern Italy. The presence of these civic traditions is equated to the presence of social
capital: virtuous citizens are helpful, respectful, and trustful towards one another, and
these characteristics, specially interpersonal trust, are usually considered forms of social
1
Although not explicitly presented in that way, some recent developments related with civic
republicanism and participatory democracy, as Benjamin Barber’s proposal of a “strong democracy”, or
Joshua Cohen and Joel Roger’s proposal of “associative democracy” can equally be understood as
proposals of public policy aiming at the creation of stocks of social capital (Barber 1984; Cohen and
Rogers 1995).
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capital (Green and Brock 1998; Rahn and Transue 1998; Uslaner 1998; Shah 1998;
Stolle 1998).
In this paper, I shall explore the possible connections between the republican
tradition in political theory and the social capital research paradigm. I will focus in one
specific feature of republican tradition: the belief of the republican authors in the notion
of common good. In section two I will differentiate two strategies in the republican
tradition towards the achievement of the common good. In section three I will
concentrate on the first of these strategies, that centred in the concept of civic virtue,
and I will discuss its potential role in the solution of collective action dilemmas. This
will lead the analysis to the concept of social trust and its relations to civic virtue. In the
final section I shall discuss the relations between social capital in the form of
associations and civic virtue. It will be explored the possibility that certain forms of
social capital, the participation in networks of civic engagement, affect individual
actors’ orientations. More specifically, that they promote an endogenous transformation
of preferences, through deliberative processes, towards a more “virtuous” model of
citizen.
2. Civic Republicanism and the common good.
One of the central principles of the republican tradition in political theory is the
belief in a notion of the “common good”. This republican commitment has been defined
in a “minimalist” way as a belief in the possibility of settling at least some normative
disputes with substantively right answers (Sunstein 1988, 1541). Nevertheless, there are
important differences among republican authors concerning the means by which it could
be possible to attain the common good of the community. In this section I will
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distinguish between two different views that we can find in the republican thought about
how to achieve the common good. Firstly, through the exercise of “civic virtue” by the
citizenry. And secondly, by institutional design: the creation of formal institutions
designed to the attainment of the common good. Obviously, it is impossible to make a
sharp distinction among authors in the republican tradition using this criterion.
Although certain authors can be clearly assigned to one of these two views about the
attainment of the common good, in most of them there is a mixture of civic virtue and
institutionalist arguments concerning the common good. Nevertheless, I think it could
be useful to maintain this distinction for the sake of exposition.
1.Arguments based on the individual display of civic virtue. Civic virtue is probably
the key concept in classical republican thought. It is usually understood as the
disposition to further public over private good in action and deliberation (Dagger 1997,
14). For most of the authors in the republican tradition, the possession of civic virtue by
both the citizens and the rulers is a necessary precondition of deliberative processes
aiming to the achievement of the common good. This means that the political action of
the citizens and their representatives must be guided not by what is in their self-interest,
but by what will best serve the community in general. Among the authors of classical
republicanism this emphasis in the role of civic virtue as the only necessary condition
for the attainment of the common good is perhaps best found in the humanist writers
previous to the quattrocento. For authors like Compagni, Mussato and Latini, the only
way towards the common good of the republic is the abandonment by the people of all
personal and sectional interests, and the equation of their own good with the good of the
Republic as a whole (Skinner 1978, 43-45). Leonardo Bruni, one of the first writers of
the great Florentine republican tradition of the Renaissance, can also be included in the
side of the “civic virtue” argumentation about the common good of the community. In
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Machiavelli, the display of virtù by both the citizens and the rulers is probably more
important than institutional design for the attainment of the common good. The main
condition to avoid corruption (understood as shirking one’s civic duties in favour of
personal pleasures, or advancing one’s personal interests at the expense of the common
good) is for Machiavelli a moral one: the citizens must be willing to put aside their
private interests and fight for the common good of the Republic (Pocock 1975, 210).
Finally, during the years previous to the American Revolution, the faith of the founders
in the civic virtue of the American people was probably stronger in the aim of the
creation of a virtuous Republic than the necessity of the adequate institutions. For
Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson or even John Adams in 1776, the transition towards a
republican government would be very easy, because Americans were republicans by
nature. In Thomas Paine’s words, Americans “instead of being sunk into that general
licentiousness, profligacy and dissoluteness of manners, of which there is so much
complaint in the ancient countries, are, for the most part, industrious, frugal and honest”
(Wood 1987, 100). According to Gordon Wood’s interpretation, this optimistic view of
the founders of the American Republic about the civic virtue of the American people
was maintained until the democratic tendencies of the 1780’s rose the issue of the
“danger of factionalism”.
2. Arguments based on institutional design for the attainment of the common good.
The basis of these set of argument is either that the civic virtue of the citizenry and the
rulers is not a sufficient condition for the attainment of the common good, or that civic
virtue is not a necessary condition for that end. These authors defend the establishment
of formal institutions of a certain kind as a way towards the fulfilment of the common
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good2. The theory of mixed government, the separation of powers and the theory of
checks and balances are probably the most clear manifestations of the institutional
argument concerning the common good. The justifications of these institutional devices
were related to the preservation of the common good of the community against various
dangers. The theory of mixed government, in some ways the basis of the other two, was
first elaborated in Athens to avoid the dangers of democracy, considered by Plato and
Aristotle as the tyranny of the poor over the rich (Richards 1994, 124-125). The fears of
democracy, of the government of the poor, were also present in the founders of the
American republic. The best known elaboration of this topic is found in the writings of
James Madison. He thought that, if unrestrained by external checks, any given
individual or group of individuals will tyrannize over others (Dahl 1956, 6). The
greatest danger of tyranny –understood as a severe deprivation of a natural right- comes
from a majoritarian faction. What Madison had in mind was the danger towards the
property right of the rich. The theory of mixed government was designed to avoid that
danger. The distributions of functions among social orders (the one, the few and the
many) would compel them to put aside their sectional interests and rule with an eye to
the common good. The outcome of this distribution of functions would be, in the words
of Gianotti, the “mechanization of virtue”. This institutional design did not need the
presence of a virtuous citizenry for the attainment of the common good. This is
explicitly stated in James Harrington’s Oceana: “The spirit of the people is no wise to
be trusted with their liberty, but by stated laws or orders; so the trust is not in the spirit
of the people, but in the frame of those orders” (Nippel 1994, 21). The same can be said
of the separation of powers and the doctrine of checks and balances. The debates in the
Federal Convention, where both theories had their advocates, were presided by the issue
2
Civic virtue can also be understood as a form of institution. If civic virtue is interpreted as a norm of
conduct or a cultural convention, then it can be considered an informal institution. Instead, formal
5
of majority tyranny. In the 1780’s, for John Adams and even Thomas Jefferson, it
seemed clear that civic virtue was not enough: without the adequate controls, the people
could behave in a tyrannical and arbitrary way (Wood 1987, 403-408). The doctrine of
checks and balances retained the idea of the mixed government that in order to prevent
abuses of power, the various governmental bodies should be capable of actively
resisting and counterbalancing each other. It lost the principle of the mixed government
concerning the representation of different social forces in the different branches of the
government. Finally, the doctrine of the separation of powers prohibited any influence
of one of the functionally defined departments over another (Manin 1994, 30-31).
After this definition of the main lines of the classical republican tradition and its
relations with the concept of the common good of the community, it is time to explore
the connections of republicanism with the social capital research paradigm. In the next
section I discuss the relations of social capital with the concept of civic virtue. In
section 4 it is discussed how the republican belief in the attainment of the common good
can be used to question some characteristics of social capital.
3. Social capital and civic virtue.
The term “social capital” was firstly introduced by Loury in the 1970’s, referring to
the set of resources that inhere in family relations and in community social organization
and that are useful for the cognitive and social development of a child or young person.
The most cited definition of the concept is that of James Coleman. He also defines
social capital as a set of resources inherent in social relations that makes possible the
achievement of certain ends that would not be attainable in its absence. Some examples
of social capital according to Coleman are the following:
institutions are mainly political and judicial rules, economic rules and contracts (North 1990).
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- Obligations and expectations. This is the most frequent form of social capital found in
the literature. It is the form of social capital referred by Robert Putnam in his study of
civic traditions in Italy (Putnam 1994, 167). It is well described by Coleman: “if A does
something for B and trust B to reciprocate in the future, this established an expectation
in A and an obligation in the part of B to keep the trust. This obligation can be
conceived as a credit slip held by A to be redeemed by some performance by B”
(Coleman 1994, 306).
- Information potential. It is, according to Coleman, another form of social capital.
Information can be acquired using social relations that are maintained for other purposes
(Coleman 1994, 310).
- Norms and effective sanctions. An example of prescriptive norm that constitutes an
important form of social capital is the norm that one should forgo self-interest and act in
behalf of the collectivity. These kind of norms are important in overcoming problems of
collective action.
- Authority relations. A person in a position of authority has available social capital in
the form of rights of control on certain activities of the person under his authority
(Coleman 1994, 311).
Other authors have emphasised the structural side of social capital: social capital
as an aspect of a social structure, not an attribute of individuals (Foley and Edwards
1997; Kolankiewicz 1996, 435; Diani 1997, 133). Other approaches have stressed the
subjective side of social capital: a subjective phenomenon composed of a range of
values and attitudes of citizens that influence or determine how they relate to each other.
Among these norms and values those related to trust and reciprocity are particularly
important. Some authors, like Kenneth Newton, see in this definition of social capital
the modern social science analogue of fraternity (Newton 1997).
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As regarding the two republican strategies towards the common good outlined in
the previous section, it is clear that social capital has nothing to do with the second, the
institutionalist strategy. Certain forms of social capital can be understood as informal
institutions (norms of behaviour, codes of conduct and conventions), but not as formal
ones. However, it can probably be found a relation between the first republican strategy
and social capital. The classical republican concept of civic virtue is a promising link
between republicanism and the social capital research paradigm. In this section I
examine the relations between civic virtue and social capital. Nevertheless, the study of
these links is done without considerations to the relation of civic virtue and the common
good of the community. In the last section the possession of civic virtue by the citizenry
was introduced as a way to achieve the common good of the community. Here I
consider the role of civic virtue in overcoming collective action dilemmas. Of course,
the attainment of the common good of the community, as the republican tradition
understand it, requires a previous resolution of a collective action problem by the
citizens, and this is supposed to be done through the display of civic virtue. But, for the
moment, the objective of the collective action is not going to be considered. That will be
discussed in the next section.
As we have seen, civic virtue is usually defined in the republican tradition as the
disposition to further public over private good. Nevertheless, there are differences
among republican writers concerning the relation of private interests and public
concerns in the virtuous citizen. In the political theory of Plato and Aristotle it seems
that there is no contradiction between private and public good. The virtuous citizen is
happy only when he is acting in behalf of the community. The participation of citizens
in the public life of the polis is the only way to update the rational nature of man, and
this, in turn, is the adequate framework for his happiness (Domènech 1989, 78-90).
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There isn’t either a conflict between private interest and public concerns in Machiavelli.
For him, the citizens love the republic and are capable of virtuous deeds because they
realize that the republic is the foundation of their liberty, security and prosperity. They
love their country and its laws because they feel the republic to be their own cause and
because they perceive it is in their interest to live in that republic. When they fulfil their
civic duties they are not sacrificing their interests, but securing them (Viroli 1995, 73).
The relation between private interests and public concerns in the case of Tocqueville’s
“enlightened self-interest” is very similar: involving himself in the affairs of the
community, the citizen recognizes where his true interest lies (Oldfield 1990, 146-147).
There is, nevertheless, a small difference with the former authors. Tocqueville
recognizes that, in pursuing his “self-interest properly understood”, the citizen must
sacrifice his short-term interest in behalf of long-term interest (Tocqueville 1995, 109).
As in the case of Plato and Aristotle, this is a characteristic of a rational man. Other
authors in the republican tradition consider in a different way the relation between
private and public interests. The clearest example in the republican tradition of this
second interpretation is probably Montesquieu. For him, the display of civic virtue is in
contradiction with the pursuing of private interest, so the virtuous citizen must sacrifice
his private interest in behalf of the common good (Viroli 1995, 72-73).
In the first interpretation of civic virtue, the concern for the common good of the
republic directly affect’s one welfare. That is, the attainment of the common good of the
community –or, more general, the attainment of a cooperative equilibrium- is a part of
the welfare function of the virtuous citizen. Considered in this way, it is an instrumental
behaviour (it is concerned with an outcome: the attainment of a cooperative
equilibrium), and therefore a rational one. In some sense it is even a selfish behaviour:
the virtuous citizen acts in that way because it is in his personal interest to do that. This
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is explicitly clear in the tocquevillian notion of “self-interest properly understood”. On
the contrary, in the second interpretation of civic virtue, the citizen behaves against his
own personal interest, considering, for example, that it is his duty to do that. This can be
hardly understood as a rational behaviour. It is not even so in the sense of the “selfinterest properly understood”, because there is not a sacrifice of short term interest in
behalf of long term ones. A virtuous citizen in the second sense is supposed to act
according to his duty even if nobody else is behaving in that way and the foreseen
outcome of his action is as bad in the sort term as in the long one. This second
understanding of civic virtue is similar to one of the forms of social capital considered
by Coleman: a norm that one should forgo self-interest and act in behalf of the
community.
As we have said before, the display of civic virtue can be understood as a way to
solve a dilemma of collective action. In the absence of selective incentives, the usual
solution to the collective action dilemma is through repeated interactions. In this case, it
is argued, what an agent chooses to do at one moment is one determinant of what the
other will do at later moments, so that threats or promises –implicit or explicit- become
possible. These are usually formalized into such strategies as tit-for-tat: “cooperate on
the first round of the game and in all later round match the other player’s move in the
previous round” (Axelrod 1986, 41). The problem of this solution to the collective
action dilemma is that its application to the real world is very limited: in general terms,
cooperation is difficult to sustain when the game is not repeated (or there is an end
game), when there is not full information about the other players, or when there is a
large number of players. In the case of impersonal exchange, these conditions are rarely
found (North 1990, 12-13; Elster 1985, 360-361). The presence of civic virtue can alter
the outcome of the game modifying the preferences of the players. In the prisoner’s
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dilemma there is an assumption of selfish preferences. In the case of players with civic
virtue, their preferences are not selfish in the same way. In the first version of the civic
virtue, that of Aristotle and Machiavelli, the preferences of the citizen are similar to
what Amartya Sen describes as “sympathy”, or more accurately, what Christopher
Jencks calls “communitarian unselfishness”: identification with a collectivity, rather
that with specific individuals (Sen 1990, 31; Jencks 1990, 54-55). As I have said before,
these preferences can in a way be considered selfish, but the incorporation of the
interests of the collectivity in the welfare function of the player modifies decisively the
payoffs of the game. In the second version of civic virtue, that of Montesquieu, the
citizen sacrifices his selfish motivations in behalf of the community, in order to fulfil his
duty. In terms of Bernard Williams, it is a non-egoistic macro-motivation (a general
motive to cooperate based in a moral duty (Williams 1988, 9-10)). These preferences
can favour the achievement of a cooperative equilibrium as the solution of the game.
The strategy that one player with those preferences will probably play is one on
unconditional cooperation: in the case of a repeated game, he will choose cooperation in
the first round, and he will play cooperation in all later rounds whatever the other player
play. Notice, however, that the cooperative equilibrium will only be achieved if both
players display civic virtue. In a game between two virtuous agents, cooperation is the
dominant strategy of both of them, so the solution is a cooperative equilibrium
(Domènech 1989). But if only one of the players is virtuous, the dominant strategy of
the non-virtuous player is defection, and the solution of the game is that the virtuous
player cooperates and the non-virtuous player defects. This is why Machiavelli
considered that the republic was a structure of virtue only in the sense that every
citizen’s ability to place the common good before his own was the precondition of every
other’s (Pocock 1975, 184). In the game between the virtuous and the non-virtuous
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agent, although the strategy of the first, given his preferences, would be cooperation in a
one-shot game, it is not so clear that his strategy in a infinitely repeated game would be
unconditional cooperation. If
the virtuous citizen continues with his cooperative
strategy and the other player continues with defection, the first one can learn finally that
virtue does not pay. If the cost of being a sucker is very high, the virtuous behaviour
will extinguish sooner or later (Williams 1988, 5; Mansbridge 1990, 136-137).
Then, suppose that our virtuous citizen is placed in a world where there is
uncertainty about if the other people with which he interacts is virtuous or not. What
would be the strategy of the virtuous citizen in these interactions? The strategy would
be different depending of the kind of civic virtue. A virtuous citizen in the second sense
–he is virtuous because it is his duty to be so, even at the expense of his private
interests- would probably choose to cooperate. The outcome is not important to him:
even if the other player is a defector and the outcome is not a cooperative equilibrium,
he must fulfil his duty. On the contrary, a virtuous citizen in the first sense –he equates
his private interests with the interests of the community- can decide not to cooperate in
a one-shot Prisoner’s Dilemma. Given that he can be dealing with a non-virtuous
citizen, he can choose not to cooperate because he is afraid that his goodwill will not be
reciprocated. His behaviour is instrumental, directed towards an end: the attainment of a
cooperative equilibrium. His willingness to cooperate depends on the subjective
probability he assigns to the other player of being virtuous, and on the ratio between the
potential losses if the other player is non-virtuous and the potential gains if the other
player is virtuous. In other words, it depends on the trust he is willing to place in the
other player, on his beliefs about “social trust”. At this point we have reached one of the
main topics found in the literature on social capital: the generation of social trust. As we
have seen, trust is a form of social capital widely used in the literature. For authors that
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disdain what they call the “structuralist” approach to social capital, norms of trust and
reciprocity are the most important forms of social capital.
The analysis of trust in the social capital literature is focused on a certain kind of
trustful relations: those that arise from frequent interactions. Participation in
associations is a source of this kind of trust. It is argued that trust arises in this case as a
by-product of the cooperation for the appropriation of a private good (Coleman 1988;
Putnam 1994, 170). This means that people participate in associations in order to obtain
a private good (like a bowling club, for example), but, as a by-product of this
participation, relations of trustworthiness are created among the members of the club.
The mechanism of the creation of this relations of trust can be learning about the
trustworthiness of the other members of the association, derived from past experiences
with them (Hardin 1993). This is a kind of “thick” trust, more probably found, for
example, in friendship, where it is possible to imagine that there can be sufficient
knowledge about the trustworthiness of the other (Hawthorn 1988, 112-113). But in the
case of the virtuous citizen in a world with uncertainty about the trustworthiness of the
others, this kind of trust is irrelevant in one-shot interactions with people that he does
not know. The virtuous citizen will choose to cooperate in a one-shot prisoner’s
dilemma if he beliefs that people, in general, is trustworthy (of course, he can also
cooperate after assigning a low probability of trustworthiness to the other player if the
potential gains of mutual cooperation are sufficiently high and/or the potential losses in
the case that the second player defects are sufficiently low). But this kind of “social
trust” is difficult to derive from the relations of personal trust created, according to the
literature on social capital, inside associations. Trust cannot necessarily be generalized:
in this sense, the empirical evidence of the creation of social trust from the participation
in associations is ambiguous (Brehm and Rahn 1997; Stolle 1998). Neither the
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mechanism between membership in such groups as soccer clubs or bird-watching
societies and social trust are very clear (Levi 1996, 47-48). This is an important
problem for the social capital paradigm, because one of the attractiveness of the concept
of social capital is its influence on such things as the effectiveness of democratic
institutions, and social trust is one of the mechanisms to explain this beneficial effect
(Putnam 1994).
It could be useful to sum up the arguments posed till this moment. I have argued
that the display of civic virtue can be understood as a solution to a dilemma of
collective action. This is possible because a virtuous citizen has cooperative
preferences. Nevertheless, this solution is only possible if all the players have those
same preferences, and if this structure of preferences is common knowledge for all of
them. But, in the case that there is uncertainty about the trustworthiness of the other
players, the virtuous citizen in the first sense will only choose to cooperate in a one-shot
prisonner’s dilemma if he have social trust, that is, a belief that people in general is
trustworthy. This points out to one of the main problems in the social capital literature:
the generation of social trust beyond the limits of associations.
One possible solution to this problem is to claim a relation between social
capital, in the form of associations, and civic virtue. The possibilities of this relation are
discussed in the next section. But, previously, it is necessary to consider the connections
between civic virtue and social trust.
In the discussion about the virtuous citizen in a community of virtuous and nonvirtuous citizens, we have sustained that in the problem of cooperation what counts are
not the cooperative preferences of the virtuous citizen, but his expectations about the
behaviour of the other player. Given the uncertainty about the virtuous or non-virtuous
nature of the other player, and in the absence of some kind of signal about that, a
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cooperative behaviour in a one-shot prisonner’s dilemma depends on the display of
social trust. We have to determine if it is possible to sustain that a virtuous citizen is not
only a citizen with cooperative preferences, but one that displays social trust.
In some republican authors it is clear that widespread trust is necessary for the
good of the community. Machiavelli, an author that often expresses a negative attitude
towards trust, as a form of dependence and a weakness incompatible with autonomy,
recognizes nevertheless that if suspicion becomes so widespread that there is no more
trust, men are rendered incapable of citizenship and real manhood (Pitkin 1984,
21,101). However, this general statement is not enough to claim a positive relation
between social trust and civic virtue in the republican tradition. Together with
arguments centred on the value of autonomy, there are some other possible arguments
against that relation. One argument of this kind is that the republican tradition has been
always very suspicious against corruption or behaviours against the common good of
the community. These republican suspicions are usually directed against governments.
One of the most clear statements in this sense can be found in the radical Whig tradition
of the XVIII century in England. For example, this statement by Thomas Gordon:
“Whatever is good for the People is bad for they Governors; and what is good for the
Governors, is pernicious for the People” (Wood 1987, 18). A possible answer to this
argument against the positive relation between civic virtue and social trust is that the
republican authors where thinking of governments, not of interpersonal relations. But
social trust is trust among individuals. Nevertheless, statements that affirm that the
virtuous citizen must remain alert to avoid corrupt and factious behaviours in their
fellow citizens can easily be found in the republican tradition. This can be thought as
contradictory with a trustful behaviour. Philip Pettit’s answer to this problem is that
there is no contradiction between maintaining expressive distrust –whose manifestation
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can be, for example, the establishment of checks and balances- and actually not feeling
distrust. A citizen can believe, for example, that his rulers are uncorrupt, but he can also
believe that, in the absence of the checks and constraints implemented by expressive
distrust, they would begin to develop habits of corruption (Pettit 1997, 264-265). This
argument demonstrates that there is not a necessary contradiction between certain acts
of expressive distrust, like checks and balances or vigilance towards the behaviour of
other citizens, and an attitude of social trust. Nevertheless, it does not implies that civic
virtue leads necessarily to social trust. It is clear in the argument that the display of
expressive distrust can be a manifestation of beliefs of real distrust in the citizen.
A possible strategy to connect civic virtue and social trust is to see a trustful
behaviour as a signal. The display of social trust by the virtuous citizen, in the form of
cooperative overtures in social interactions with unknown people, can be interpreted by
others as a signal of his trustworthiness. Given that a virtuous citizen (interpreted in the
first sense) is committed to a certain outcome –the attainment of cooperative equilibria-,
he can consider that bad experiences with defectors can be worthwhile if they are
signals towards virtuous people that he is trustworthy. If this signal works the result can
be more frequent interactions between virtuous people. This group of unconditional
cooperators will attain medium payoffs higher that the group of defectors, and the
result, as has been shown for a conditional strategy as tit-for-tat, will be that the
defectors will transform themselves in cooperators. Nevertheless, it can be very costly
to the virtuous citizen. The signal of virtue can be recognized by virtuous and nonvirtuous players, and so he can deal with many defectors until he establishes his
network of cooperators. Perhaps he will give up in order not to be considered a sucker.
To attain the desired outcome a certain commitment with a sense of duty it could be
useful, like in Montesquieu’s interpretation of the virtuous citizen.
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This is not perhaps a fully convincing argument to defend a positive relation
between civic virtue and social trust. It can be even argued that when the virtuous
citizen is considering his cooperative overtures as signal of his trustworthiness he is not
displaying social trust. He is not actually believing that people in general is trustworthy,
but that only some people is. A possible answer to this objection is that the outcome is
the same that if the virtuous citizen believes that everybody is trustworthy. Of course, it
is the same outcome if the citizen is virtuous in a non-consequentialist sense (that is, if
he cooperates because it is his duty to do so). But probably this is, in a way, a stronger
requisite of virtue. And, from a normative point of view it is probably a less interesting
form of virtue, because it does not imply, as in the first kind of virtue, a self-knowledge
on the part of the citizen, a development of second-order preferences.
According to the last argument posed, it can be defended a relation between
civic virtue and social trust (or, at least, virtual social trust). It rests to be shown the
relation between social capital, in the form of associations, and civic virtue. This will be
discussed in the next section.
4. Associations and civic virtue.
Although associations are not the only form of social capital, it has been the
privileged object of study of this literature (Gamm and Putnam 1999, 513). In this
section I will discuss some possible connections between participation in associations
and change of preferences in a virtuous sense.
Social capital, as found in the literature, is considered as a set of resources derived
from certain social relations, that are useful to attain certain ends of the individual
actors. In this account of social capital it is implicit that the preferences of the actors are
17
given. This is why the presence of social capital has been considered sometimes as a
neutral resource for the attainment of whatever ends. This means that the consequences
of the presence of stocks of social capital isn’t necessarily beneficial. The classical
example is the Weimar Republic: the strength of secondary groups served in this case as
organs of socialization for an authoritarian ideology (Berman 1997; Rueschemeyer,
Stephens and Stephens 1992, 113-114).
In the last section I have advanced a possible although not conclusive strategy to
sustain that civic virtue has a positive relation towards social trust. If it is argued that a
certain form of social capital –participation in associations- can be a source of
endogenous transformation of preferences in a virtuous sense, then it can be sustained
that the presence of social capital in a given society has beneficial effects not only
because it is a resource for the solution of certain social dilemmas –specially the
achievement of widespread cooperation through the display of social trust- , but also
because that generation of civic virtue.
A possible way in which participation can lead to an endogenous transformation of
preferences in a virtuous sense is through deliberation. The belief in the power of
deliberation was a contribution of the Founders of the American Republic to the
republican tradition. This belief was opposed to an understanding of the political
process as a bargaining between different groups with given preferences. The republican
belief in deliberation counsels political actors to achieve a measure of critical distance
from prevailing desires and practices, subjecting these desires and practices to scrutiny
and review (Sunstein 1988, 1548-1549).
In the republican literature we can find at least two strategies to sustain that
deliberation can lead to the transformation of preferences towards the common good.
The first one of these strategies refers to the structure of the deliberative process. The
18
second one, to the actors that participate in the deliberative process. This second
strategy is the less interesting for our discussion. It claims that deliberation can lead to
the attainment of the common good because the participants have certain characteristics.
These are, following John Rawls, that they have realized their two moral powers –a
capacity for a sense of justice and a capacity for a conception of the good- , and have an
enduring desire to be fully cooperating members of the society over a complete life.
Moreover, those persons share a common human reason, similar powers of thought and
judgement, and a capacity to draw inferences and to weigh evidence and to balance
competing considerations (Rawls 1995, 247). These characteristics are similar to those
of a virtuous citizen. This strategy is not very attractive for our aims because it does not
claim that civic virtue is an outcome of the deliberative process, but a prerequisite to it.
The first strategy claims that certain features of the process of deliberation can lead
to a change of preferences. One of these features can be the rules of the process.
Sometimes it is argue that if the discussion is public, there is a pressure to abstain form
egoistic arguments (Elster 1995, 390). It is claimed that there is a desire in the
participants not to appear selfish, because it would be embarrassing or shameful (Fearon
1998, 54). Another possible mechanism to explain why the participants in a deliberative
process usually justify their views in terms of the common good is the psychological
mechanism of reduction of cognitive dissonance: individuals tend to make coincide
what they do with what they think, to reduce dissonance (Elster 1987, 113). Another
feature of deliberation that can lead to a change of preferences is that deliberation can
reveal private information. (Fearon 1998, 46; Gambetta 1998, 22). Some participants
can reconsider their preferences given the new information now available.
A common problem of these supposed effects of deliberation –formulation of
preferences in terms of the common good for shame or to reduce dissonance and
19
revealing of private information- is that they are open to an strategic manipulation of
preferences by the participants. They can formulate their preferences in terms of the
common good, for example, only to manipulate the other participants. We can borrow
an illustration of this from Rousseau, in his discussion about the transition from the
natural state to the civil one: the proprietor convinces his neighbours (who are a threat
to his property) to go through this transition invoking a general interest (protection of
the weak from the strong, peace, harmony) that hide his actual selfish interests
(Rousseau 1990, 179-180). Of course, the incentives for the manipulation of preferences
are higher when there are conflicting interests between the partners in the discussion, as
in Rousseau’s example. This is also the case of interactions between virtuous and nonvirtuous citizens. There, mere discussion may not necessarily lead to the common good,
because the conflict in the initial preferences of the participants in the discussion can
induce them to try to manipulate the other participants. Once again, we see that in order
to attain the common good, the participants in the deliberation process have to display
certain characteristics from the beginning: at least courtesy, empathy, and reasoning
ability. These are some of the characteristics of the reasonable citizen, in Rawls’ sense.
If they posses at least these characteristics, the deliberative process can lead to real
considerations of the general good of the community. Of course, it is also required
conditions of equality between the participants. These characteristics are a prerequisite
for deliberation to take place. Nevertheless, this does not mean claiming that the
participants have to be virtuous from the beginning. Empathy and reasoning ability can
be considered characteristics of the virtuous citizen, but they are not the only two. More
important are the identification of the private and public interests or the sacrifice of
private interests to fulfil public ones. Empathy can be thought as a component of those
preferences, but they obviously go beyond empathy. However, even if these
20
prerequisites are fulfilled, it is not so clear that the deliberative process would lead to a
transformation of preferences in a virtuous sense. If there are initial conflicting interest,
there will always be an incentive to cheat the other participant. This is not to say that in
the case of initial proximity of interest the outcome is a transformation of preferences in
a virtuous sense. In this case, there is no need of transformation of preferences.
Therefore, the conditions for deliberation to take place are reasoning ability and
empathy. But it is not still obvious that the deliberation process could lead to a virtuous
transformation of
preferences. In the case of initial conflicting preferences, the
incentives to manipulate are very strong. The best we can expect is probably an
exclusion of the most crude expressions of selfish arguments, in order to avoid shame,
or as a manifestation of the capacity of empathy that is a prerequisite of deliberation.
Only if the participants are virtuous from the beginning it could be possible to attain the
common good.
Then, the connection between deliberation and generation of civic virtue is not a
clear one, to say the least. It remains now to see the relation between social capital as
associations and deliberation.
According to the social capital literature, nearly all type of associations can be
considered forms of social capital. Following Coleman’s definition of the concept,
“horizontal” and “vertical” associations are forms of social capital. Some attempts to
exclude certain types of associations as forms of social capital can also be found in the
literature. For example, that of Robert Putnam. He considered that vertical relations
should be excluded as a form of social capital, because they are less helpful than
horizontal networks in solving dilemmas of collective action, because in a vertical
relation opportunism is more likely in the part of both patron (exploitation) and client
(shirking) (Putnam 1994, 175). Members of a vertical association cease thinking about
21
how to deal with each other and concentrate instead in how to cope with the shifting
demands of more powerful agents above them. Quite in a different way, horizontal
relations, specially networks of civic engagement, foster robust norms of reciprocity,
and facilitate communication and improve the flow of information about the
trustworthiness of individuals (Putnam 1994, 173-174). This criteria to exclude a certain
type of associations, based in its capacity to overcome dilemmas of collective action, is
not very convincing. Putnam uses it to exclude the Mafia from his analysis of social
capital and institutional performance in Italy. Nevertheless, the Mafia is not an
organization characterized by problems in overcoming dilemmas of collective action. It
uses various enforcement procedures, including threats of death, to ensure the
trustworthiness of members of the organization. The result is a high internal capacity to
solve dilemmas of collective action, although its effects for the wider society are the
consolidation of social distrust (Gambetta 1988).
A second criteria of distinction between associations differentiates between public
and private goods-producing associations (Boix and Posner 1996, 9-13). According
with this criteria, civic associations dedicated to the provision of public goods will
produce a stronger form of social capital that those dedicated to the provision of private
goods. The reason for this is that in the case of the provision of public goods there are
strong incentives to defect. This means that the successful maintenance over time of a
public-good producing association is a signal of the creation of a robust form of social
capital. This criteria is not very clear. Perhaps the existence of public goods-producing
associations could be a signal of the previous existence of social capital: it could be
argued that the solution of the dilemma of collective action is due to the previous
presence of forms of social capital as, for example, systems of trust (like communities
of mutual trust) among the members of the association. This is not a necessary condition
22
for the provision of public goods. Coercion or other forms of selective incentives can do
it as well. Moreover, it is not clear that public good-producing associations can create a
more robust form of social capital. Not, certainly, if we understand more strong as more
enduring. In an association created for the pursuing of a private good, social capital can
be created as a by-product, for example in systems of mutual trust like friendship. There
is no reasons to believe that this relations are not going to be as enduring as if created
inside a public good-producing association. More robust can also mean more useful for
the solution of social dilemmas. It is not obvious, however, that relations of
trustworthiness, for example, have to be more frequent in a public good than in a private
good-producing association.
The criterion to differentiate between associations that is derived from the
discussions in this and the previous sections is its capacity to promote deliberation. This
is related with its capacity to solve collective action dilemmas: deliberation can induce a
transformation of preferences in a virtuous sense, and virtuous citizens can solve
collective action dilemmas because they have cooperative preferences and display social
trust. I shall use the distinction between horizontal, vertical, civil and political
associations.
Firstly, the distinction between horizontal and vertical. Although the criteria of
differentiation are not very clear, I will assume that in horizontal associations there is
more equality among their members in terms of the participation in the decision making
process than in vertical associations. In vertical associations, decisions are adopted
without the participation of most of their members. The catholic church is an example
of this. On the contrary, in horizontal associations, there is a participation of their
members in the process of decision-making. Deliberation is a form of decision making
incompatible with vertical relations. There are no incentives for deliberation, given that
23
the results of the deliberation process have no influence in the working of the
association. The beneficial effects of deliberation on the preferences of the participants
are by-products of the participation, but the decision to participate in the deliberation
process is instrumentalist: to obtain a certain outcome (Elster 1987). Without the
possibility to influence in the decision making, there are no incentives to deliberate. In
the case of horizontal associations, deliberation can also be absent. If what is required is
participation in the decision-making process, this can be done through voting. But, at
least, there is room for deliberative processes. There are not relations of dependence
between the members, so there are not conflicting interests from the beginning. This
means a reduction of incentives for manipulation.
Secondly, we have the distinction between civil and political associations. This
distinction is taken from Tocqueville, and is related to the objectives of associations.
According to Tocqueville (although in this point as in others in Democracy in America
there are some contradictions), the development of political associations is easier than
the development of civil ones. On the one hand, participation in civil associations is
more costly: in most of them their members have to risk part of their money (it seems
that Tocqueville is thinking mainly in commercial or industrial associations). On the
other hand, the gains of association seem greater in political than in civil life. In civil
life men see themselves more autonomous, while in political life the need of
cooperation to attain common ends is more obvious (Tocqueville 1995, 102-107).
Deliberation as discussion can take place in both kinds of associations. But, from the
point of view of deliberation as a source of transformation of preferences in a virtuous
way, political associations seem to be more interesting. At least if we consider the
content of the discussion in both types of associations. Some of the effects of
deliberation, as revelation of private information or overcoming of bounded rationality
24
(Fearon 1998) can take place in civil as well as in political associations. But the end of
deliberation, from a republican point of view, is the transformation of preferences in a
virtuous way. This means that the citizen have to equate his interests with those of the
community, or sacrifice his private interests in behalf of the community. As we have
seen, it is not clear that deliberation can lead to this transformation of preferences. But,
in any case, it can be argued, at least, that if the content of discussions of the members
of an association are related with the interest of the community, this transformation is
more likely to occur that if the discussion is, for example, about who should play in the
next match of your soccer club.
Then, according with this criteria of differentiation –capacity to promote
deliberation- horizontal political associations are those with the greatest capacity to
promote deliberation and, secondly, horizontal civil associations. Vertical associations,
political or civil, are absolutely against deliberation. Ideally, this criteria could be
equated with differences in the generation of social capital, given that deliberation is
related with civic virtue and this with social trust.
5. Conclusion.
The conclusion, from the point of view of the social capital research paradigm, is
that perhaps a close analysis of the republican tradition in political theory could be
useful. A conception of social capital not only as a resource for the attainment of given
preferences, but as a source of the transformation of those preferences in a virtuous
sense could be important for debates on the “neutral” character of social capital. In this
paper I have sustained that a way to defend this concept of social capital is claiming that
participation in certain types of associations (especially political associations with an
25
horizontal organization) can lead, through deliberation, to a virtuous transformation of
preferences, and, from these, to the generation of social trust. The mechanisms of this
chain, unfortunately, are not clear enough. The relation between deliberation and civic
virtue is dubious, and the argument advanced to explain the relation between civic
virtue and social trust is not clearly an argument in favour of the generation of social
trust, but, at its best, of “virtual” social trust.
26
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